Friday Facts #114 - Better train conditions

[rnorris]

I see a lot of potential for some amazingly good changes in this.

OpenTTD has a thing for this, it's called "Conditional Order Jump" - an order that, when executed, checks the train's condition and decides whether to continue on to the next order, or rather skip to a specific order.

This would also be helpful for culling trains from the network once their home outpost is dry. Have them proceed to a holding yard if they go without gaining any items at the stop over the specified amount of time and then wait until full. No inserters at the holding yard will make them wait there for the player to manually re-assign them. The refueling station jump would also be incredibly handy in keeping a fleet of trains supplied.

If stations gets circuit connections, it would be interesting to have them being able to be enabled/disabled from circuit conditions. It would permit to have train not going to disabled stations.

You could essentially make a long-range logistics network out of this. That would be pretty amazing.

One other thing I would like to suggest while trains are getting some love: the option to switch trains over to visiting same-name stations in a round robin fashion rather than the closest one all the time. Another useful option would be to have them visit the nearest/round-robin unoccupied station so if I have three trains delivering iron to 6 stations all named iron-dropoff, they can simply visit choose ones that aren't currently being served and have not been visited in the last trip or two.

[ratchetfreak]

How would the and/or condition work?

I expect that a good mining outpost condition would be:

fully loaded
OR
(waited 10 seconds AND wire-condition buffer chests empty) //no sense waiting on nearly empty belts
OR
(wire condition mining drills empty)
OR
waited 20 seconds //something went wrong

[AnarCon]

I wish building belts, pipes and especially power lines would be the same.

oh hells yes, especially pipes would be nice, belts too, power lines... not so much needed tbh

[Twinsen]

If stations gets circuit connections, it would be interesting to have them being able to be enabled/disabled from circuit conditions. It would permit to have train not going to disabled stations.

I'm planning on making the trains controllable using the circuit network. This sounds like an interesting idea, thanks.

[hitzu]

power lines... not so much needed tbh

Power lines should be lines, not a chaotic web of wires.

[DasMonzta]

Now factorio just needs a gameplay change that makes trains really necessary. I invested around 300hours in one map and i built trains to get some ore, but it was only for fun. I would love that you would be forced to build local small factories that must be connected via trains. Or at least some kind of benefit.

[ske]

I wish building belts, pipes and especially power lines would be the same.

Power lines aren't too bad as it is right now. You can even ride a train and plant a new powerline beside the tracks.

Belts aren't too bad either, except underground belts, there is no drag and build. Same with underground pipes. Especially since underground pipes are often needed to connect far away oil fields.

[knub23]

Now factorio just needs a gameplay change that makes trains really necessary. I invested around 300hours in one map and i built trains to get some ore, but it was only for fun. I would love that you would be forced to build local small factories that must be connected via trains. Or at least some kind of benefit.

This is so true, you can just move ores around. I decided for myself that I wanted to build small assembly lines and move the goods, so the train network got a bit more complicated. The game already has the right idea by limitting the amount of cargo depending on the type (1 storage space holds 50 ore but 100 iron plates) but the general capacity is so high, that you simply don't have to care. So either limit the capacity of each cargo wagon (a third of what we have now would be enough) or rebalance the amount that goes into 1 cargo space (for example: 10 ore per space and 50 iron plates per space). This would also lead to longer trains, which just look better

I am really looking forward to this train update and the new possibilities. Even if trains don't get a rebalance I will continue building them.

[MadZuri]

Rail demo contains no loops, 10/10. Seriously tho, that's awesome.

[vaderciya]

I very much like the changes to the train station, I find everything very much to my liking, keep up the good work

[roman566]

@knub23

Limiting trains is Bad Idea. Right now trains are better at long ranges than belts, you limit their capacity and the logical choice would be to use belts instead. Especially with the ridiculous idea to reduce ore moved to 10 per stack! My factory needs 10k ore per minute to work. If trains got nerfed like you propose, I would just scrap all tracks and replace them with blue belts as trains would simply be incapable of delivering enough material.

[safan]

Will the FAT controller also be included in .13? One of the benefits of the controller is that you can change the orders of a train from a distance in case you made a fault.

[TuftyIndigo]

I'm guessing none of the dev team have used the great IDEs made by JetBrains: IntelliJ IDEA, CLion, or PyCharm. If you had, you'd know how awesome it is to make every list in the GUI filterable by typing. (i.e. you start typing a station name in the station list, and you only see stations with matching names).

I think these changes are a good step in the right direction, but you guys could still do with a GUI designer, even if it's only a one-off consultancy session.

[Tev]

Brilliant!

Just make auto / manual switch a bit bigger, it should be easy to hit without misclicks.

[pyrolytic_tungsten]

If stations gets circuit connections, it would be interesting to have them being able to be enabled/disabled from circuit conditions. It would permit to have train not going to disabled stations.

I'm planning on making the trains controllable using the circuit network. This sounds like an interesting idea, thanks.

I could easily see something like this leading to train stops at all iron outposts having the same name and the stops only being enabled when a train can take a full load or no ore is loaded into partially full buffer chests in x amount of time. This way trains automatically choose which iron outposts to go to. You would never have to change the schedules of iron ore trains after they're setup even with dozens of iron outposts being constructed and deconstructed.

This would also help resupplying outposts only when necessary with walls, laser turrets, etc. One would hope that your resupply train spends most of its time in its home station with no destination stations available. That said a train that wants to go to its next stop but can't because no destination stations are enabled should show something like "no destination" instead of "no path". It should be possible to set a next station for a train that is in transit but no longer has any valid destinations so we don't end up with a bunch of trains clogging up the rail network. That place to wait would probably be set to some sort of rail storage yard.

It would be best for trains to prioritize going to train stops that don't have a train en route because train stops may have their conditions satisfied after 1 train.

[Yttrium]

Will we be able to let combinators decide if a train should leave?
Like in the SmartTrains mod.

[DaveMcW]

Will we be able to let combinators decide if a train should leave?
Like in the SmartTrains mod.

Yes, that is what "Circuit condition" means.

[Seru]

I really like how you updated the trains. Can't think of anything else to ask for their driving pattern.

One thing I hope you'll be able to add:
Weaponry on trains.

Having a train drive around and be able to have mounted turrets on wagons that automatically target and shoot enemies would be overly awesome. Would make long distance railroads much safer and also instantly make me switch my preferred vehicle to drive around and kill biters to trains.

[wwdragon]

I'm happy to see the new rail control and ui

I don't care about the graphics so much as the clarity!

[mrtux]

I really like the work on the railway/train UI! *thumbs up!*

Instead of setting complicated conditions in a UI window, I'd rather like to be forced to build those on my own; aka: I need an element that allows me to control the train based on network conditions (included) and then some sensor for the wagon states. A stop timer could even be built with two chests (see Minecraft stop timers), the rest is already in Factorio. Sophisticated train control should have a certain level of complexitly.